African Folk Tales

When Joseph Mbele visited our class last week, one of the things he talked about is how folk tales can be so very valuable in learning about a culture. He said that's a way to understand what's important and what a culture sees as valuable and moral.  It made me very happy that I had already planned to make (force?) each student in my Humanities of South Africa class to present a South African Folk Tale to the rest of the class.

Joseph Mbele has a book of folk tales himself, which I am purchasing as soon as I get my next paycheck: These folk tales are from Tanzania, and I can't wait to read this.

Since we're studying South Africa, however, I found this book:

 Each student will get one folktale to present to the class through any means they choose:
storytelling
a skit (collaboration is encouraged)
a video/film
a powerpoint with appropriate pictures while telling...maybe even reading in that case
anything else they can think of.
Some of the stories include the following (Aren't the pictures spectacular!!??)

Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales was published by W.W.Norton&Company in 2002.
I can't list all the contributors or artists, but the book is worth checking out.Everything is copyrighted, so I only gave you a little sampling here.
I can't wait to see what my students do with these stories!